


Plenty of Catfish in the Sea

by Lalalli



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Catfishing, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Online Dating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 17:04:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10391658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lalalli/pseuds/Lalalli
Summary: Fitz is definitely getting catfished. He knows better than to believe that pretty and famous biochemists lurk on online-dating sites.He hits 'reply' anyways.An expansion of my "Love before first sight" drabble on U-trope-ia.





	

Bobbi big-sisters Fitz into getting a Plenty of Fish account a month after reuniting with Hunter. She’s still in the honeymoon phase, which means that she’s a big believer in romance and true love, and apparently she wants Fitz to experience that too.

Fitz only acquiesces to get her off his back - he put very little effort into making his profile, to be honest. As expected, he only receives messages from clearly fake profiles asking if he wants to watch them get off via webcam, or whatever. And it doesn’t take long to recognize when a profile is fake just by looking at the profile picture - the women in the pictures are usually well-endowed and scantily clad and wearing about a metric ton of makeup (not that there’s anything wrong with that - just that they’re clearly catering to a demographic that Fitz is not a part of).

So it’s only a matter of time before Fitz gets a message from someone who’s clearly trying to catfish him.

\-----

From: badgirlshenanigans

Hi! You’re cute ;)

\-----

On it’s own, it’s a message too short to be very suspicious. But if the fact that this person is calling him cute isn’t a red flag in and of itself, the profile picture is of someone he knows.

Okay, well maybe Fitz doesn’t really know her, but he sure as hell recognizes her. Because she’s famous.

“Is she?” Hunter asks, peering over Fitz’s shoulder at the screen. “I have no idea who she is.”

Fitz turns to look at Hunter, mouth agape. “Dr. Jemma Simmons? Renowned biochemist? Two Ph.D.s by the age of 18? Is this starting to ring a bell?”

Hunter scrunches his face. “Is there such a thing as a famous biochemist?”

“Have you considered that maybe it really is Jemma Simmons?” Bobbi asks.

“I doubt it,” Fitz snorts. “Look at her profile. First of all, there’s no mention of science or her two Ph.D.s - wouldn’t she want to lead with that?”

Bobbi shrugs. “Maybe she’s worried she’ll come off as intimidating.”

Fitz rolls his eyes. “Please. As though Jemma Simmons would even want to date someone who’s intimidated by her intelligence. And look at the stuff she does list: skydiving, travelling the world, desert-camping.”

“That doesn’t necessarily disprove it’s her,” Hunter says. “Maybe she has layers. Aren’t you the one who gets all huffy when people assume you live in your lab coat?”

“Furthermore, the last I heard, she was dating some hot-shot astronaut.” Fitz shakes his head, too busy feeling disgruntled to really consider anything Bobbi and Hunter have to say. “You know, it’s really insulting that this person thinks they can catfish me using a picture of a celebrity. You just don’t do that. That’s like catfishing 101.”

“Okay, but is she really a celebrity?” Hunter points out.

“It’s like they didn’t even read my profile,” Fitz continues. “They clearly just looked at my picture and assumed I was some loner sad-sack. Or maybe they did and just disregarded the fact that I have a Ph.D. - they’re probably thinking that my desperation overrides my intelligence.”

And the more Fitz thinks about it, the more indignant he feels. He knows that he doesn’t have to prove himself to anyone, but he does irrationally want to prove that he’s too smart to be outwitted by an Internet schemer. And more than anything, he wants to catch this would-be catfisher in the act. To reverse-catfish the catfisher. To turn the catfisher into the catfishee.

So without thinking too much about it, he clicks on ‘reply’.

\---

From: robomonkey

You look familiar. Aren’t you Dr. Jemma Simmons? I think I might have seen you at a conference in Austin earlier this year.

\---

Fitz isn’t expecting to receive a reply the next day.

\---

From: badgirlshenanigans

I can’t believe you actually responded to my message. To be honest, I was very drunk when I sent it. Not that it makes its contents any less true, just that I would have sent something a bit better crafted.

I also can’t believe you recognized me. I was at that conference in Austin, presenting my research on dendrotoxins. Were you presenting or just attending?

\---

If anything, he thought the revelation that he actually knows the person in the picture would be enough to dissuade the catfisher from continuing their hoax. And it is a hoax - the inclusion of the information about the conference doesn’t prove anything beyond the fact that the catfisher knows how to use a search engine. He immediately switches over to Google and typed in “Dr. Jemma Simmons Austin”, and sure enough, a link popped up that listed all the presenters at the conference and the titles of their presentations.

Fitz replies again. All he has to do is keep up the conversation, and sooner or later they’re going to ask for money.

\-----

From: robomonkey

Why were you so drunk? Stressful day at work?

I also presented - I designed a series of drones to be used in the field of forensics.

\---  
From: badgirlshenanigans

It was my roommate’s birthday. Beer pong was involved. I missed out on playing all those drinking games during my university years, plus I have terrible hand-eye coordination, so I was the worst one there.

I think I remember your presentation. Leopold Fitz, right?

\---  
From: robomonkey

How can someone so terrible at drinking games have a username like “badgirlshenanigans”?

You are correct, but please don’t ever call me Leopold. Everyone calls me Fitz.

\---

From: badgirlshenanigans

Obviously, the bad girl shenanigans come after I get wasted, otherwise they would never occur. My roommate is a terrible influence on me.

Not that usernames mean anything. I assume that you are not, in fact, a robotic monkey?

\---

From: robomonkey

Joke’s on you, because I am literally a robotic monkey.

\---

From: badgirlshenanigans

That’s quite the twist. Am I in an M. Night Shyamalan movie?

\---

From: robomonkey

Is it really a twist if I’ve advertised it from the start?

\-----

As it turns out, Not-Jemma has great taste in movies and books and television and music. She (Fitz mentally uses female pronouns even though Not-Jemma could just as likely be a man or non-binary) is surprisingly opinionated and combative for someone who’s trying to flatter him out of his life’s savings. Against his better judgement, Fitz finds himself compulsively checking his messages throughout the day, wanting to keep their conversation going.

Despite this, Fitz is still waiting for the catch. It comes three weeks into their correspondence.

\-----

From: badgirlshenanigans

I’ve been working up the nerve to ask you if you want to meet up in person, which is ridiculous because I’m not even in town at the moment. I’m not even in the country right now. I’m doing some research in South America (I’m afraid I can’t be more specific than that, as my work is classified) for the next three months. I probably should have mentioned this earlier, and I was going to except I got sidetracked when you said that Dumbledore’s Army was a stupid plotline.

So if you have some other offers to go on dates, I won’t be offended or anything if you don’t wait for me to return. I know three months is a long time.

\-----

Fitz can’t help but smile. She’s probably going to tell him in three months that she’s been kidnapped by a cartel and needs $50,000 to pay the ransom, or that she’s stranded in the middle of the Amazonian rain forest and needs help getting home. But he rather that come later rather than sooner. He likes talking to Not-Jemma, despite the fact that he doesn’t know anything about who she really is.

\-----

From: robomonkey

Okay, but are you just bringing this up to distract me from the fact that you STILL haven’t explained why you think the fourth doctor is superior to the tenth? I need supporting evidence, Simmons. And his scarf does not count.

\-----

Fitz doesn’t mean to share so much about himself with her. It’s just that she’s so damn supportive and easy to talk to. So sharing stories about work leads to complaining about work which leads to musings on their career paths which leads to sharing dreams for their future and before he knows it, Fitz is telling her all about his asshole father who left him and his mum when he was ten.

And he doesn’t really believe that she thinks any less of him, and he’d like to think that he’s savvy enough to recognize if she’s trying to use this information to manipulate him, but in all honesty, maybe he isn’t because he’s starting to think that Not-Jemma is starting to become his best friend.

Which is crazy, right? Because Not-Jemma is...well...not Jemma. Fitz doesn’t know the first thing about her - not her name, her age, her gender, where she lives - which really, when he thinks about it, is the minimum of what a person should know to even be considered an acquaintance. All he knows is that she’s smart and funny and knows exactly what to say when he’s having a bad day. He really is trying very hard to not be won over, but yeah - he’s totally won over.

And the thing is, even though he knows he could never be romantically involved with Not-Jemma for a variety of reasons, maybe once the air is cleared, he and Not-Jemma could be friends.

Maybe Fitz will give her money, if it doesn’t look like she wants to keep corresponding. He just doesn’t want to keep up the ruse. He’d rather be honest about how he’s just giving her money to keep being his friend. Like a friendship hooker. That’s a thing, right?

“That’s definitely not a thing!” Hunter shouts, slapping the back of Fitz’s head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“What?” Fitz protests, defensive. “It’s like paying someone to provide a service. Like giving a massage. She’s just massaging my...my feelings. It’s like an emotional massage. Talking to her makes me happy.”

Bobbi wrinkles her nose. “That sounds so wrong.”

As it turns out, that’s not the only thing he says that’s wrong. Because he also told Bobbi and Hunter that Not-Jemma would definitely be hitting him up for cash once it’s time for her to return, but then all of a sudden, she’s back.

\-------

From: badgirlshenanigans

Hi! Just wanted to let you know I’m back in town as of five minutes ago. I’ll probably need the next few days to recover from jetlag and to get my life back in order, but maybe we can get together for coffee on Sunday? If you’re not busy, that is.

\-------

From: robomonkey

Coffee? Together? In the same place?

\-------

From: badgirlshenanigans

I do realize that it’s a rather novel concept, but I’d very much like to talk to you face to face. Unless you’re not interested?

\-------

From: robomonkey

No! It’s not that. I’m definitely interested. Just surprised, is all. Is it weird that your trip ended up feeling a lot shorter than I expected?

\-------

From: badgirlshenanigans

Maybe it felt short for you, but as someone who has been without running hot water for the past ten weeks, it’s definitely felt like eons for me.

Plus, I missed you. Isn’t that strange? I haven’t even met you yet.

\-------

From: robomonkey

I missed you too.

\-------

Fitz thinks about having Bobbi come with him for backup in case Not-Jemma wants to murder him, but he figures that the coffee shop is a public enough location and he doesn’t really want to have any witnesses to his eternal humiliation.

Fitz scans the room when he gets to the coffee shop for anyone who’s sitting alone, though it’s just as likely Not-Jemma won’t show up at all. He’s standing in line when a young woman sitting in a corner table stands and waves at him with this bright smile on her face. Fitz’s jaw drops a bit and he can’t even move his hand to wave back because she is actually, literally Jemma Simmons. Which he feels compelled to share out loud once she gets tired of waiting for him to move and just walks over to greet him instead.

“Of course,” Real-Jemma says, unable to hide her amusement. “Who else would I be?”

\------

It’s not that Fitz thought he’d be able to hide it forever. He just didn’t see how it would ever come up. He certainly wasn’t going to volunteer the information.

Of course, he should have known better, especially considering that he lives with _Hunter_.

“You were right, Fitz. She definitely looks like a 40 year old man living in his mother’s basement.” Hunter casually opens the refrigerator and rummages through the shelves, as though he didn’t just completely mortify Fitz.

Jemma freezes, the strawberry speared on her fork hovering halfway between her plate and her mouth. Her eyebrows wrinkle in confusion. “I look like a 40 year old man?”

She most definitely does not look like a 40 year old man, especially right now when she’s sitting next to him at the breakfast bar with her hair still mussed from the night before and an oversized t-shirt hanging loosely on her slender frame.

“Fitz was making some assumptions,” Hunter tells her, removing the milk from the fridge and reaching up to open the cupboard to get the cereal.

“Ignore Hunter,” Fitz advises. “That’s what I always do.”

“To your detriment,” Hunter points out. “If you had listened to me, you would have saved yourself months of stress.”

“But I posted a picture of myself,” Jemma reminds Fitz.

“Fitz didn’t think you were you,” Hunter explains.

“Huh?”

“He thought he was being catfished.”

Fitz thumps his forehead on the counter. “Hunter,” he groans.

“But if you thought I was catfishing you, why did you talk to me for four months?” Jemma asks, somehow sounding simultaneously confused and indignant.

“Three and a half months,” Fitz corrects her, his face still buried in his folded arms on the counter. He looks up at Jemma, sheepish. “I was offended that you were trying to catfish me, so I was trying to out-catfish you. It’s a pride thing.”

Jemma’s face scrunches in thought. “But everything you told me was true, right?”

Fitz immediately straightens. “God, of course - Jemma, you have to know -”

He’s interrupted by her laughter, bright and clear and loud. “So you liked me even when you thought I was scamming you?”

Fitz rubs the back of his neck. “You have some very insightful opinions on feminist science fiction literature,” he says defensively.

Jemma leans forward and kisses him. He can feel her lips curving into a smile, and it may have only been a week since they started doing this, but it’s already his favorite thing in the world. “You know you’re the most ridiculous person I’ve ever met, right?” she asks when she pulls away, her voice fond.

“I had a feeling, yeah,” Fitz agrees, smiling bashfully at her. “But it’s nice to know for sure.”

 


End file.
